Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/148

126 as real as possible, did not like the soldiers to be standing on the bare polished mahogany of the dining-table.

'It's not a bit like the field of glory,' he said. And indeed it was not.

So he borrowed the large kitchen knife-box and went out, and brought it in full of nice real clean mould out of the garden. Half a dozen knife-box-fulls were needed to cover the table. Then the children made forts and ditches, and brought in sprigs of geranium and calceolaria and box and yew and made trees and ambushes and hedges. It was a lovely battle-field, and would have melted the heart of anyone but a nursery-governess.

But she just said, 'What a disgusting mess! How naughty you are!' and fetched a brush and swept the field of glory away into the dustpan. There was only just time to save the lives of the soldiers.

And then Cecily put the knife-box back without saying what it had been used for, and the knives were put into it, so that at dinner everything tasted of earth, and the grit got between people's teeth, so that they could not eat their mutton or potatoes or cabbage, or even their gravy.